Filed April 28 by Kyle Dickman
Photographs by Adam Mills Elliott
It's been a phenomenal week of kayaking for the Epicocity crew on southwest China's Salween River. Himalayan snowmelt left the Salween swollen with rapids that were the biggest and most exciting we've paddled over the past two months.
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Text by Rivers in Demand teammate Kyle Dickman
A year from now, it will be impossible to repeat the eight-day rafting trip we just completed down the Great Bend of the Yangtze. This 120-mile section of the Yangtze, like many of China's rivers, will be dammed in 2009. It was amazing to experience this world-class stretch of whitewater before it changes forever.
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Photograph by Adam Mills Elliott
Filed by Rivers in Demand team member Kyle Dickman
After we'd been in Tibet for two days, all travel was restricted and foreigners and nationals alike were prohibited from entering the province. No amount of negotiation would open the gate between us and our goal of kayaking the Upper Salween River.
So we changed plans to try an undocumented section of the Mekong still within Tibet that, in 2004, a kayaker had allegedly soloed during peak monsoon. He had lost all of his photos and video from the trip, so this would be an opportunity to film it for the first time.
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Photograph courtesy Adam Mills Elliott
Amid the current political turmoil erupting across Tibet, last week the Rivers in Demand kayakers were denied access to the stretch of the Upper Salween River where they hoped to claim a first descend. And to their dismay, Tibetan checkpoint officials informed them that another, unknown expedition had put in on a first descent attempt of the river just days before. Frustrated and with their plans temporarily thwarted, the team, which includes Adam Elliot, Trip Jennings, Andy Maser, and Travis Winn, began to set their sights on new objectives.
The crew settled on an equally ambitious undertaking: the upper reaches of the massive Mekong River. While one Australian kayaker claims to have run this epic stretch of high altitude, Class V whitewater—alone, even—several years ago, documentation of his feat has yet to be found. Regardless, this remote and dangerous area of the world will be filmed for the first time.
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Loaded up with kayaks and filming equipment, the Rivers in Demand crew began making the overland journey across China this week en route to the Tibetan Plateau for the first part of their ambitious new expedition. Today (March 14) Trip Jennings (one of our 2007 Adventurers of the Year) and his teammates will begin a first descent attempt of the upper Salween, the last unexplored section of whitewater draining the Tibetan Plateau.
On its upper reaches, the crew expects to encounter severe Class V rapids with dangerous levels of commitment and exposure. The glacier-fed Salween cascades down from some of the highest mountains in the world, frothing through profound slot canyons, guarded by underwater boulders, torrential rapids, and waterfalls.
The last free-flowing major river in South Asia, the Salween flows between Myanmar and Thailand to the South China Sea, but controversial plans exist to build a Chinese-funded hydroelectric dam on its lower stretches. The group hopes to draw attention to the consequences that this development would have on the millions of people who depend on the river.
If all goes according to plan, the crew will drop in on the Salween today at an elevation of more than 11,000 feet (3,353 meters). Keep tabs on the their progress at china.riversindemand.com. The site features a bit of context for the Rivers in Demand project, along with regular audio and text reports from the crew as they descend through Tibet and China. We’ll keep you posted as they move on to the Great Bend in the Yangtze and the middle Salween.
--Lucas Pollock
Photograph by Travis Winn, taken on a 2007 scouting trip of the Salween
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